


The Art of Forgetting

by SumthinClever



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Heavy Angst, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Psychological Torture, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 17:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30126162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SumthinClever/pseuds/SumthinClever
Summary: Harry wakes, and it's like he's coming to from a series of nightmares. After suffering from tortures and amnesia, Harry's memories are finally intact and he finds the world isn't quite the same as when he first went to sleep.Unofficial sequel to Winterwolke's "Out of Sight, Out of Mind." This is the aftermath.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Winterwolke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterwolke/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Out of Sight, Out of Mind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26285236) by [Winterwolke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterwolke/pseuds/Winterwolke). 



> This fic is for Winterwolke, who told me to "Go for it!" when I told her I had IDEAS about the end of her fic and what follows after. xD And for Livia, who also had IDEAS! I can't wait to read your take! <3
> 
> Infinite thanks to my betas [Adybou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adybou), [Rei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rei382/pseuds/Rei382), and [Phe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhenomenalAsterisk), who helped make this better. Any remaining mistakes are me not listening to better judgment.
> 
> Please mind the tags, friends. My beta's first comment was "ಠ▃ಠ". xD

_ He remembers everything. _

Harry sits up with a start.

_ “Draco!”  _ He tries to say it out loud, but his dry throat makes it come out as more of a gasp than the exclamation he was aiming for.

He swings his head around, expecting to see Draco in a bed beside him, laid out from the tortures the house put him through, that  _ Harry  _ was forced to put him through. He does not expect to see Hermione in a chair beside his bed, hand clutched in Ron’s beside her and both of them asleep with their heads resting together. Their faces are drawn, as though sleep did not come easy and was hardly content to stay even after it was achieved.

“Hermione,” Harry croaks. Clears his throat and tries again. “Hermione.” Louder this time.

Harry sees Hermione stirring at the sound of her name, blinking tired eyes open and taking a moment to focus on where she is, what she is seeing. Harry witnesses her eyes widen when she realises he is awake, and she jerks up, dislodging Ron, and bounds over to crush Harry in a hug that knocks the air out of him.

Harry pats her back as she bursts into sobs with her face in the crook of his neck, tightening her hold around him and blubbering words Harry cannot comprehend into his hospital dressing gown. Harry looks towards Ron for answers, and is not comforted by the look his best mate gives him.

Harry refuses to think about what the look could mean and instead asks, “Where’s Draco?” He knows Draco should be here. Even if he is still recovering from his own injuries, Hermione and Ron wouldn’t have let the Healers put Draco too far from his own recovery bed.

Ron’s mouth curves down, his eyes dropping to the floor and Hermione cries harder into Harry’s neck. Harry’s eyes drill holes into Ron, afraid to ask again, but mind absolutely rejecting the conclusion Hermione’s sobs and Ron’s frown indicate.

“Harry,” Ron says, eyes still steadfastly on the ground. “I’m afraid, er, we were too late.”

Harry’s brain short-circuits. Hermione is crying more intelligible words at him now.  _ I’m sorry _ . And _ If we’d only figured it out sooner _ . And  _ There was just too much blood _ .

Harry can see the blood in his mind, and he almost wishes he could forget again. The way he’d cut into Draco with malicious intent. Carving him up like a chicken at Sunday dinner. He’d made artwork of him.

Harry stares forward sightlessly, the events of the past…days? weeks? playing in his mind. How he’d forgotten, every day. How some days he’d been cautious of Draco, but curious. Willing to hear his tale, however unlikely. How other days, he’d sought Draco out with a single-minded purpose of causing harm. How he’d  _ Crucio _ ed him. How he’d sliced into him.

“Where is he?” Harry hears himself say. He doesn’t quite feel it. Can’t connect himself to the body speaking.

“He’s down in the morgue,” Hermione tells him. “We didn’t… we couldn’t let them take him anywhere else.”

Harry turns his head in the direction of the door, intent on going down to the—going to see Draco immediately. He’s hooked up to monitoring spells and he can suddenly hear an incessant beeping that he has barely noticed before now; it’s accelerating. He thinks it’s his heart rate or his breathing or both. He can feel both increasing, becoming as unsteady as his mind.

He moves to disarm the spells.  _ He’s fine _ . It’s Draco who di—Draco who needs him.

Hermione tries to stop him, tries to tell him to wait, let the mediwizards do it. And they are here, rushing into the room as Harry disengages their monitoring, swings his legs over the side of the bed, his sudden desperation to get to Draco giving him strength enough to push all of these people out of his way despite just waking up from a coma.

A Healer comes in and observes him, clearly sees the determination in his eyes, his intent to leave the room, and calls the mediwizards off, tells them to allow Harry passage, to follow instead of block. Harry doesn’t care what they do, so long as they let him through.

He stumbles out into the hallway, his legs not as steady under him as he’d like, but he’s moving as quickly as they allow. Hermione is stationed at one elbow and Ron at the other. Ready to catch him if he falls, to pull him back into his room if he needs.

He doesn’t need. Harry knows where he is. Recognises this part of St. Mungo’s. He’s been an Auror long enough, been injured often enough, to have been within these walls infinitely more times than he cares to count and enough times that Draco has nagged him ceaselessly about being more careful, not jumping into situations without backup, relying on his team. Harry can see him now, tisking as he cleans up Harry’s bumps and bruises at their bathroom sink, changing out bandages and applying a poultice on healing wounds.

And it’s not like Draco’s own job is without danger. Curse-breaking is a tricky art, as Draco has told him on more than one occasion, and the risks for bodily injury are high if one is not careful. Draco is always careful.

Harry walks down the hall, his expression and retinue clearing a path from anyone who would get in the way. The lifts are slow and Harry debates taking the stairs before a bell dings and the doors slide open. Harry and his handlers file in, and his expression discourages anyone else from joining this particular lift with them.

The ride to the morgue is made in silence, as they have been since they all left Harry’s room. Harry is trying to quiet his mind, trying to cling to his thoughts of Draco, his determination to see him. Because if Harry thinks too hard about where he’s going, _ why _ he’s going there, he can’t guarantee he’ll still be standing.

The lift dings again when they reach the morgue and it resounds in Harry’s head like sombre church bells. His steps are slower when he leaves the lift, his stride less certain.

“Over there,” he hears Hermione tell him, sees her point to a set of large metal drawers, arranged in orderly columns and rows like a filing cabinet. They have filed Draco away like he’s paperwork and Harry almost chokes on air.

Harry makes his way over. Slowly. So slowly. Harry feels as if the floor is sucking on his feet like quicksand, dragging his steps, making the journey across the room a slog. Delaying the inevitable. When he reaches the drawers, he finds one marked  _ Malfoy-Potter, D _ and puts his hand on the handle.

He can’t open it. Seeing is believing and believing would make it too real. Draco is not in this cabinet. Not in this hospital.

Harry hears Hermione behind him, softly ushering the mediwizards back to their duties. Tells them they have it from here, will watch after Harry, will bring him back to them when he’s done doing what he needs to do. Harry almost tells them he is done now, can feel his mind splintering and thinks opening this drawer will fracture it beyond repair.

He hears the mediwizards retreating and then feels hands on his shoulders at each side. Ron and Hermione, beside him like always. Harry takes a fortifying breath and then pulls on the drawer. He sees the magic of a Stasis Charm shimmer and he keeps pulling. Blonde hair is what he encounters first. Then pale skin on a face that’s always been a little bit angelic, a little bit devilish. That face is marked up now, scattered with cuts from Harry’s knife. Like the rest of his body, Harry realises as he finishes pulling Draco all the way out. He is bared to the world, no dignity spared for the dead. His skin is too pale, some part of Harry notes. Blood loss. He knows Draco would be cold to the touch, if he dared touch him.

There are marks all over him. The faded scars of the Sectumsempra almost eclipsed by the slashes Harry had intentionally put in him over the last however many days. Those elegant hands and feet Gille de Rais would have admired are marred by cuts, both deep and shallow. But he probably would have liked that, too, the sick fuck.

Harry stares at the marks on Draco’s hips. They’d been bruised by his own hands the day before they’d been called out on this mission to infiltrate the house in search of Prelati. Harry and Draco, they enjoy sex. Rough and eager, slow and passionate, anything and everything in between. It’d been both passionate and rough, that last night. Them on a high from a successful investigation, nearing the end of a months’ long search, excited and enthusiastic about the morrow. They were too restless to be careful with each other.

Harry remembers that night. The laboured breathing and furious thrusting and the clench of his hands on Draco’s hips, driving himself harder, faster, deeper. The moans they both couldn’t hold in, wouldn’t have wanted to even if they could.

He thinks about this night as he sees the outline of his handprints, carved into Draco’s skin. He remembers himself, high on de Rais’ influence, wanting to make the image permanent. And on his left hand, a deep gash in his thumb. Where de Raise-Harry had tried to cut Draco’s finger off, sick at the insult of Harry Potter having married Draco Malfoy.

Draco’s bloodcurdling scream suddenly resounds in Harry’s ears, magnified by the horror slowly sinking into Harry’s reality. He did this. Nearly flayed his husband to the point that he lost so much blood he di-. Harry pushes out a frustrated breath and forces himself to think the words. Died.  _ He died _ . Draco is dead and Harry killed him and Harry’s mind is breaking  _ piece by tortured piece _ .

A sudden thought strikes Harry and he turns, frantic.

“Ring. His ring. Where?” he babbles at Hermione.

She slowly reaches into her robe pocket and produces Draco’s ring. It’s silver and old fashioned, a relic recovered from the Malfoy vaults and worn by the Malfoys of old. It’s not Harry’s style, but Draco loved them and Harry loved Draco enough to not be too fussed over what symbolised that love. But he did get to choose the quote they had inscribed in the silver. He chose one from some American writer chap by the name of Green. Harry had heard the quote and thought it fit them well:  _ I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.  _ Harry’s ring read,  _ “Slowly, and then _ ” and Draco’s finished with  _ “all at once.” _

It was silly and sentimental and Draco had called him a sap, but never took his ring off from the moment Harry placed it on his finger at their bonding ceremony. Except it is off now. The ring is off and Draco is dead and Harry’s heart and mind are in tatters. 

He drops to the floor, no longer able to withstand it. Harry’s heart is beating, breaking, seizing up on him. His eyes are loosing tears that have been held back even before Harry realised he was doing so. Harry clutches his chest, gasps, feeling as though his lungs are failing to take in enough air. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He wants to scream his pain, his anguish, at the gods and Merlin alike for the injustice of it all but  _ he can’t breathe _ . 

Ron is at his side, rubbing his back and offering the comfort of his silent presence. Hermione is clutching his free hand, murmuring words surely meant to be soothing, but Harry can’t take them in. His mind is too far away, too disconnected from all that has happened to him. His heart is behind him, in a drawer of a filing cabinet with Draco’s  _ body _ . 

It’s too much. Something in Harry irreversibly breaks and he loses it all. Harry’s vision blurs and he hears Hermione’s frantic voice before his world goes dark and he collapses.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short epilogue, set some months after the last scene.

Time passes, as time does. Harry improves, as much as he can. Therapy helps. Working through his experience has been a long and exhausting process, but Harry has managed to let go of a lot of his guilt. Not all of it, but a lot. Quitting the Auror corps helped. Harry just couldn’t do it anymore. Robarts tried to argue against his departure, but Harry was adamant. Harry’s life had never been this peaceful before, and Harry is learning to treasure that, however much he misses the thrill of it all. Visiting Draco’s grave helps. Harry talks to him there, brings him flowers. Tells him stories of the Weasley children. Of Narcissa, who Harry still takes tea with. Teddy.

Harry sits beside their fireplace, watching the flames lick the logs. He runs his finger over his wedding ring, still nestled on his right thumb where it’s always been, will always be. He brings his hands together and hears the click of the rings, Draco’s now nestled on Harry’s left thumb. Where it, now, will always be. Harry feels a tear roll down his face and splash across his hands, his rings. He continues to watch the fire burn.


End file.
